With the constant development in the electronic information industry, many heat-producing electronic elements, such as a central processing unit (CPU), also have constantly increased operating speed and frequency now. As a result, these electronic elements produce more heat and have constantly raised temperature to thereby seriously threaten the performance thereof. To ensure normal operation thereof, the heat-producing electronic element usually has a heat sink mounted on a surface thereof for timely carry away the high amount of produced heat. Meanwhile, to reduce a contact thermal resistance between the heat sink and the heat-producing electronic element, a thermal medium is usually applied to a bottom of the heat sink, so that the heat sink indirectly contacts with the electronic element via the thermal medium.
Since the thermal medium fills the clearance between the heat sink and the electronic element, heat produced by the electronic element is conducted to the heat sink via the thermal medium and then dissipates into ambient environment through convection. However, the thermal medium applied to the bottom of the heat sink is subject to scratch by other elements or contamination by dust when the heat sink is transported from one place to another place or is assembled to the electronic element, resulting in largely reduced heat conduction between the assembled heat sink and electronic element due to the scratched or contaminated thermal medium.
A conventional heat sink protective cover is attached to the bottom of the heat sink via bonding means provided on part of the protective cover, so as to cover and protect the thermal medium applied on the bottom of the heat sink against scratch or contamination.
That is, to attach the protective cover to the bottom of the heat sink to cover the thermal medium thereat, it is necessary to manually provide a bonding means on the protective cover first, such as adhesive tape or double-sided tape, to ensure firm connection of the protective cover to the heat sink. By doing this, a lot of labor is required to increase the cost of the heat sink. Moreover, in the process of transporting or assembling the heat sink, the protective cover tends to separate from the vibrating or moving heat sink due to insufficient bonding strength of the adhesive tape, and accordingly results in scratched or contaminated thermal medium, which would further result in largely reduced heat conducting effect between the heat sink and the electronic element. In a worse condition, the electronic element might become damaged due to poor heat dissipation thereof. In brief, the conventional heat sink protective cover has the following disadvantages: (1) failing to stably hold the heat sink in place and tending to separate from the heat sink; (2) failing to provide any dust-preventing effect; and (3) failing to protect the thermal medium against scratch or contamination.
It is therefore tried by the inventor to overcome the above-mentioned problems by developing an improved heat sink protective cover.